Love Bites Then it Sucks by Julie Steimle (best self help books to read .TXT) 📕

Right now, I am asking you to talk with my parents, my family. Tell them what happened. Show them this letter.

And contact the 7. Let them know also. These death angels tell me I can reach redemption by ending my curse. I’m not sure what that means. How does one end an ancient curse? I barely even know how I came to be. But the 7 might know. They are more resourceful than I am and they are connected to the curse. In the meantime I am to become a death angel.

Hanz, I don’t want to do it. But I have no choice. I have tried and tried to…

Their eyes trailed up to Hanz and back to the letter as his own parents were asking: “Are death angels some kind of biker gang?”

Hanz shook his head, waiting for what Eve’s parents had to say.

Mr. Johaansen shook Hanz by the shoulder to get his attention, “What is going on? Have you been secretly hiding something from us? An addiction or mental condition she has been coping with—?”

“Yes,” Hanz said abruptly. “I have been hiding things.”

His parents stared at him. Both drew in a breath.

But Hanz looked to the McAllisters and asked, “Do you know if Jessica and Andrew Cartwright have flown to California for the wedding yet? I need to show them this.”

The McAllisters shook their heads, their faces pale.

“What is going on, Hanz?” Mr. Johaansen’s voice rose. “What aren’t you telling us?”

Turning toward his father, Hanz closed his eyes with pain and said, “Eve is not a normal human being—”

“That, we know,” Mr. Johaansen said. “She is extraordinary. And she has a health condition. We get this. But what does this have to do with that crazy letter? What does she mean by death angel—that she has to become one?”

Snatching a look between Mr. McAllister, Hanz said, more to him, “I don’t know exactly. It is one of the reasons I need to show this letter to Jessica and Andrew.”

“And who are they?” Hanz’s mother asked.

“Friends,” Mrs. McAllister said. “Eve was Jessica’s bridesmaid.”

Hanz shook his head. “We should tell them the whole truth.”

Both McAllister’s stared wide-eyed at him. “But they wouldn’t understand,” Mrs. McAllister protested.

“And why would we not understand?” Hanz’s mother piped up. She had been silently listening and thinking the entire time, trying to figure out what was happening to her poor son’s fiancée. She had been assuming Eve had had a psychotic break and had run off. Both Johaansens were thinking along those lines, really.

Turning sympathetically toward Mrs. Johaansen, Mrs. McAllister replied, “Because it would require a total paradigm shift—which I don’t think you are prepared for.”

“A what?” Mrs. Johaansen stiffened, entirely affronted.

“Paradigm shift?” Mr. Johaansen repeated, angling his head critically as he eyed the McAllisters whom, up until this moment, he had always regarded in a friendly way. There had always been good feelings between the families, despite other troubles which would have made them avoid each other. Mrs. McAllister’s mother (Gran Wilson) had sneered a great deal at the Johaansen family over the years, and the McAllister’s cousins were actually cruel, as the Johaansens were poor and those Wilsons had thought themselves superior.

Mr. McAllister spoke up. “Have you ever heard the story we tell in our family that a vampire bat dropped Eve into our laps on Halloween a little before Dawn was born?”

Both Johaansens stared at him. It felt inappropriate for him to tell a family joke at that juncture. Hanz closed his eyes and rubbed the ridge of his nose between them.

“It’s true,” Mr. McAllister finally said, after a pause.

Both Johaansens groaned.

“He’s actually telling the truth,” Mrs. McAllister said.

They stared at her, especially as she had always seemed the sensible one. She had, after all, joined their Faith a few years back and attended church regularly.

Mr. Johaansen shook his head. “What is really going on?”

With closed eyes, Hanz moaned out, “They are telling the truth.”

His father stared at him, eyes wide.

Opening his eyes to meet his father’s gaze, Hanz said, “There is something I need to show you so you will believe me, because when I found out the truth, I had freaked out.”

“The truth about…?” Mr. Johaansen shook his head with incomprehension.

“What Eve really is,” Hanz said.

“When did you find this… uh, secret truth out?” his mother asked, looking nervous over his mental state.

Nodding to her, Hanz replied, “That Christmas when Eve had stayed with us.”

Their eyes widened on him, both now wondering what he had learned about the girl known as Eve McAllister.

Taking from Eve’s briefcase, Hanz held out a file folder. Old-fashioned, paper documents, typed up forms with numerous photographs were inside. He then held out Eve’s wallet, pulling out her ID cards. He said as he laid them out for his parents to see, “Eve is registered with an organization called the SRA—the Supernatural Regulator’s Association—as a demon.”

He let that sink in as his parents stared at the photographs of Eve standing with her wings out, each picture showing different lengths, from hand-sized to arm length, to so large that they could not fit in the photo frame let alone the room she was in. Those wings looked fleshy and black like a bat’s, with veins and fine hair. Next to it were photographs of her mouth documenting the length of her fangs, and of her orange eyes, her birthmark and even the claws she could extend from her fingers.

“This is Photoshopped,” Mr. Johaansen said.

“A Halloween prank,” Mrs. Johaansen chimed in.

Hanz shook his head. “No, it isn’t. I’ve seen Eve’s wings plenty of times, and you know her teeth and eyes are like that.”

The McAllisters remained silent, watching the Johaansens. Feeling their eyes on them, Hanz’s parent flinched back. But they did not believe any of it. And to them it seemed cruel that Hanz had been ‘suckered in’ to believing these things, as he clearly did. It was all over his face. Hanz could see the gears in their minds working. They were horrified, now convinced their son had fallen among devil worshippers.

“Hanz…?” His father rose from his seat, approaching him. “If she ran away, then maybe it is best that—”

“No,” Hanz bit back, pulling from him. He shook his head, trembling. “I know what you are going to say, but I have loved her for a long time. And I have waited forever to be with her.”

“But maybe—” His mother rose up, joining his father.

“No!” Hanz pulled back. But then he broke into tears. He leaned his head against his mother’s shoulder, sobbing.

She put her arms around him, patting him consolingly. So did Mr. Johaansen, though he peered back at the McAllisters who sat there looking beside themselves. The McAllister’s silently reread the letter one more time.

“…The long and the short of it is that I’ve been claimed by a group of what can be best described as death angels. I am not dead, but I am no longer able to live in the mortal world…”

“That means she is still alive,” Mrs. McAllister whispered to her husband.

Mr. McAllister nodded. He then pointed to another part of the letter.

“…I am being given a shot at redemption…”

“What do you think this means?” he asked.

She shrugged. “I haven’t a clue. I had always assumed that the rules of life applied to her equally as us. Eve is a good girl.”

But upon hearing that, Mr. Johaansen shot her a dark look. He tried to steer Hanz away from them.

Jerking up, feeling the motion, Hanz snapped out of his tears, breathing hard. He shook his head, stepping away from his parents. He hastily wiped his eyes, cheeks flushed from embarrassment. Looking around the room, his eyes then rested on the McAllisters. He grabbed the letter, poking it in one spot. “This part says that all she has to do is end her curse—”

“There’s no such things as curses,” Mr. Johaansen said with an inward groan, though his wife eyed him doubtingly. Clearly she disagreed.

“—which I think is the key to getting her back,” Hanz said.

Mr. McAllister nodded, though he looked over Hanz’s shoulder to Mr. Johaansen who was now glaring at them accusatorily.

“The Seven is the key to her curse,” Hanz said.

Mrs. McAllister rose. “I can get you their contact information.”

Hanz nodded to her with gratitude. “I have one of their business cards, but I think their website is down. I got to a screen that said it was under reconstruction and it left a contact phone number, but all I got was voicemail.”

“Wait a second,” his father interjected. “Who is the Seven? Some cult group?”

“No.” Mr. McAllister rose to his feet. “Eight individuals who work together to—”

“Then why are they not called the Eight?” Mrs. Johaansen asked. Her voice and posture were filled with intense skepticism.

Both McAllisters shrugged.

Hanz moaned. “Because the previous groups that were the Seven—or the Holy Seven as they are really called—generally had seven members. In this generation there are eight.”

His father stared at him. “Hanz. That sound like a cult. What have you gotten involved in?”

Closing his eyes, Hanz groaned inside. He had known it was fruitless to explain this kind of thing to his parents. Their view on the universe was decidedly uncomplicated—in a good way. But that also meant they did not have much space in their world view for vampires, imps, or fleshy demons. To them, witches were costumes on Halloween. And ghosts were merely spirits of the dead temporarily walking the earth. There was no way he could explain to them that he had met a werewolf, spoken with a half-imp, and had been about to marry one of the most dangerous demons the world had ever seen. And with a shared glance with Mr. McAllister, Hanz knew he had to give up trying to explain it. God did not force knowledge onto people who were not ready for it, so neither should he.

“Look, Dad, just forget it,” Hanz said, collecting back all the documents and stuffing them into the folder.

But Mr. Johaansen shook his head, forcing Hanz to meet his gaze. “I can’t forget it now. What have you gotten yourself mixed into?”

Halting, Hanz said, “Love, Dad. That’s what.”

Of course that did not satisfy his father. However, the man knew he was not going to be able to convince Hanz to explain any more. The opportunity came and went. Looking to his wife, it was clear all they had left was to pray for their son.

Hanz looked to Mr. McAllister who nodded.

Chapter Six

I have to say, I hated the neighborhood biker George had dropped me into. The streets were filthy, smelly, and loud with imps.

They were slums.

Now I had once heard Hanz quote someone who said, ‘Man takes people out of slums, but God takes the slums out of people’. That’s a paraphrase, of course. But I knew it meant that people carry their own inner garbage with them, and if